


the skin that wrapped my frame wasn't made to play this game

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [18]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 11:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6802582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your friend changes after the Lighter Incident. She changes a lot, and she isn't the only one who changes. But you are Eridan Ampora, and you don't care. As long as she's alright. </p><p>Scenes from before and after Calliope's accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the air begins to feel a little thin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luneth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luneth/gifts).



**_April 2005 - Eridan Ampora_ **

It’s such an unseasonably warm day today, that Terezi practically insists on going to the park, but isn’t allowed to go further than the top of her block alone. You don't know why her parents worry so much, she can pretty much take care of herself, visual impairment and all.

Ordinarily this would mean all of you going over to her place, but Latula - not being one to disappoint her sister - agrees to take Terezi out.

“You can invite whoever you want, too,” Latula tells her, which is why you’re going. Terezi calls you a loser on a semi-regular basis, but you’re pretty sure she doesn’t hate you.

For her part, Latula calls up several of her own friends to make this a proper outing. You note, with more than a little amusement, that she does not call your brother. At least, you don't hear his cell phone ring. 

You don’t plan on telling him where you’re going either. Not like he actually gives two shits anyway, but he asks halfheartedly. You tell him you’ll be at the park. He does not ask which park and returns to… whatever it is he does when you’re not around, which appears to be a whole lot of nothing.

You wish your father were home. He’d make Cronus shape up. He’d fix everything.

You still Skype with him, but not that often, because of the time difference. And you also pin your report cards to the fridge the way he might, were he here, and not overseas.

You assess your reflection in the mirrored glass of the table in the parlor. You continue to be a blond freckled dork with glasses.

Wait, this is a picnic, right?

You throw together a few sandwiches, shove your phone into your back pocket, and leave the house.

Calliope waits for for you at the edge of your block, clad in a little lime-green dress with red bows on the straps, and looking mildly annoyed to be wearing the thing. Callie and dresses have never gotten along, no matter how much her parents have tried to make her see otherwise.

As she walks, her flipflops slap against the pavement. She stretches her pale arms toward the sky, and laughs.

“Will dear Cronus be coming with us?”

She may be the only person who refers to your brother as “dear”, so you have to bite back a snort.

“God, no.”

You tug on one of her pigtails, and she fakes indignance. Then you two fall into an easy stride, and an easy conversation.

“So I heard it’s definitely coming out on the sixteenth,” she says.

“The sixteenth of what?”

“July, dummy!”

“It”, of course, referring to the most important piece of literature you will read this year, nay, the most important possession you’ll receive this year. The sixth Harry Potter book.

Callie shrugs, and rocks back and forth on her heels. “Maybe they’ll bring Sirius back from the dead.”

“Nah, remember how Nick said he would have gone on, and all that stuff.”

“Well, what if Nick _lied?”_

Such talk carries you all the way to the park.  

The thing about Harvey Park is that it’s pretty huge. Well, maybe it’s not huge compared to Cunningham or one of those parks where you could genuinely get lost forever and eaten by the wildlife, but it’s big enough. You and Callie sit on the fence and wait for people to get here.

Latula carries the cooler and the sunscreen, while her weirdo boyfriend carries a big ass umbrella and a giant radio. The chick with the tongue ring, whose name you’ve forgot, has a blanket and a first aid kit. Rufioh has two pizzas and a whole bunch of junk food in tow, like some kind of vision of perfection. And Damara has… herself. Herself and her scowl.

She does smile at you and the others, though.

But and your friends try to stay far ahead of that group. They’re… teenagers, and stuff. Either you approach them with hushed reverence, or you think they’re kind of embarrassing. 

Particularly Latula and her boyfriend, who are… exceedingly embarrassing.

Even Terezi seems to think so, and she can’t see them anyway. You wonder how two people can possibly walk so far with their hands in each other’s back pockets, swapping spit whenever they get the chance.

“Stay where we can see you, okay?” the young woman with the tongue ring calls, and you sort of want to know who died and made her your mother. 

She can’t be that much older than you. She’s in the same grade as Latula, who is like… four years above? You think?

Her sister doesn’t seem half bad though.

She’s dressed a little oddly for a day in the park - black shirt, long red skirt - and she seems really quiet, although maybe that’s because Vriska’s talking at her and refusing to shut up, as per usual.

“…and all these guys are kinda losers, which is why it’s good that I’m around, because otherwise we’d never do anything fun…”

Calliope finally asks the new girl a question, giving her the widest smile she can manage. In your estimation, Calliope is basically a Disney princess made flesh, one of the inordinately chipper ones that sing to wildlife, like Snow White or something.

Naturally, she’s pretty much your best friend at the moment. She balances you out your knack for catastrophizing.

Her brother can even be the main villain, y’know, the one that eats babies, thank god he’s not with you guys today.

“So, what’s your name?” Callie asks. New girl seems to actually _consider_ this question before answering, in a low, soft voice.

“My name is Kanaya Maryam.”

Calliope claps her hands once and smiles again. “Oh, that’s a lovely name!”

Kanaya blinks, seemingly a little confused by Callie’s excitement. You wish you could tell her not to worry, you’re confused too. You will never not be confused.

“Yeah, it is, uh…” Tavros chimes in. “Admittedly pretty cool.”

“Tav’s probably right,” you offer.

“Tavros is usually right,” Terezi says. “Except when he’s eating my ice cream, then he’s a criminal.”

“It was only that one time!”

“As I recall, you are a repeat offender.” Terezi insists, brandishing her cane at Tavros. She stands on her tiptoes so that they’re eye to eye. “I can smell the guilt on you.

“Oh, not this crap again,” you mutter.

Aradia snorts at you.

Kanaya seems even more confused about this exchange. Aradia offers her hand to the girl. “Don’t worry about them, they’re usually like that. And it really is nice to meet you.”

“Thank you,” Kanaya says, with the tiniest of grins. “What are all your names?”

This is Vriska’s chance to shine. She throws an arm around Kanaya’s shoulders, and the smile melts from Kanaya’s face. She raises one faintly annoyed eyebrow.

Okay, you are really starting to like this girl.

Vriska points to each of you in turn.

“Well, that’s Aradia, and she hates me.”

Aradia shakes her head. “I do not h–”

“You so do.” She pauses. “That’s Tavros, and all he does is play Pokemon.”

“I uh, also go to school and stuff.”

“Yeah, and you play Pokemon in school.”

“I play Pokemon, and I um, also get better grades than you.”

Vriska ignores him, which is great, because if she’d responded, she would have treated all of you to a monologue about how the only reason why Tavros has higher grades than she is because she doesn’t actually _try._  

But, she isn’t finished with the introductions, so you’re spared that torture. “This is Terezi, and you’d better not break any laws around her, cause blind justice is no joke.”

“I would never dream of breaking the law,” Kanaya says seriously.

Terezi walks up to her so that their faces are only inches apart, inhales sharply, scrutinizes her further, and nods approvingly.

“She doesn’t smell like a delinquent, anyway.”

“Smooth move, Rezi,” you tell her. “Two minutes and you’ve already scared the crap out of her.”

Terezi just leans on her cane and laughs. Kanaya surreptitiously takes a step or two away from her.

Vriska then turns to you and Callie, and points to you. “That’s Eridan. He’s really weird, but he’s mad loaded and his family’s got a boat. And that’s Calliope. She’s even weirder.”

Kanaya looks at everyone very slowly and very carefully, before speaking.

“That’s a rather mean thing to say. Callie doesn’t seem weird to me. Neither does Eridan.”

Well, damn. Someone actually _told_ Vriska off. Someone who wasn’t Aradia. Terezi mouths the phrase  _“holy shit”_ at you. Whoever this Kanaya chick is, you think she’s fucking cool.


	2. i began to understand why god died

_**May 2005 - Eridan Ampora** _

Callie is not the same after the end of April. No one is.

Terezi’s the first one to find out, because her mother is a pediatric nurse at the hospital where Callie’s parents initially bring her. You ask Terezi if she’s seen Callie yet, and she shakes her head.

“No, no, they’ve transferred her up to Weill-Cornell. To the burn center.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“Mami says she will, but…”

You grab Terezi’s shoulders, the fabric of her blouse wrinkling under your hands. “But what?”

“She’s going to be different.” Terezi shrugs, and seems to talk more to herself than to you. ”Maybe? Probably? Probably.”

You don’t understand. 

“What?”

“I was different after my accident,” she says.

You don’t really remember the incident that blinded Terezi, or what she was like before it. You were only three or four at the time.

But you don’t care how different Calliope is, as long as she’ll be alright.

You look up how to get all the way to the hospital on a fading subway map that you find in your brother’s dresser drawer. You’ve never taken the subway before. No reason to. But you will, you will get to 68th and York, wherever that is. 

Cronus, who is tired and spacey the way he is a lot of the time, vetoes that decision for reasons that didn’t occur to you.

“Maybe she doesn’t wanna see anyone yet, ever think of that?”

You did not.

“She’ll come home eventually,” Cronus says, going back to tuning his guitar. He momentarily stares out into space. “Then you can go see your girlfriend, bro.” 

“She’s not my girlfriend,” you insist.

Cro laughs and musses your hair, and it’s almost like having an actual older brother in that second. You go back to your room, confused. Confused and worried.

Most of the life has gone out of your little group. 

Terezi speaks infrequently, preferring to read Latula’s history books. Tavros keeps trying to goad her into playing cops and robbers with him again, even going so far as littering on the ground, but she doesn’t take the bait. She practices tricks with her cane.

Occasionally you’ll lie in the grass while she sits, the pair of you poring over dates and facts. 

Tavros himself is even more nervous, which you didn’t think was possible until now. He sits in the grass, playing Pokemon, doing his Language Arts homework, and occasionally looking around like he expects Callie to come sauntering down 143rd street.  

Aradia spends most of her time staying after school, and since she doesn’t go to school with you, Terezi, Vriska, Tavros, and Calliope, since she goes to school all the way in Manhattan, you don’t see much of her. Once, you think you see her in Flushing in the company of a skinny boy with weird-looking eyes, but you got sent down to Main Street to sign up for test prep classes, so you have better things to give a shit about.

Vriiska changes the least. She keeps trying to get all of you to do something other than sit around like a bunch of lumps. When nobody moves, she takes a seat in the grass with an offended huff, and takes to shredding leaves.

Three days after Calliope comes home, her parents drive Caliborn upstate, way, way upstate, and when they come back, he is not with them. 

You don’t ask her when he’s coming back. You don’t ask her much of anything.

Every time you ring her doorbell, her father answers and tells you that she doesn’t want company. So you undo the latch leading into her backyard, and stare at where you think her bedroom window is, her light staying on long after all the others have gone out.

You think you see a hand pull the curtain open once, a hand covered in bandages, but it may have been an illusion. A trick of the light. A hallucination brought on by excessive hope and staring at one spot for too long.

You call her every day. Every single day. You get the homework assignments for her, even though you’re not sure when (or if) she’s coming back to school. You don’t give up on her, but your friends have other things to discuss, all of you seated in your usual spot at 132nd street park. 

“Well, I heard he got sent to some school for bad kids,” Vriska says in a stage whisper. “Like, really bad kids. Like, juvie or something.”

Aradia picks at the lunch Damara packed for her, which she doesn’t particularly feel like eating. She levels Vriska in her inscrutable stare. 

You know she’s angry because Vriska was the one who showed Caliborn the trick with the lighter and the Lysol in the first place. 

To be fair, she showed it to everyone except Calliope - who was in the bathroom at the time - and most of you thought it was cool. Cool and potentially lethal, like fireworks. Classic Vriska.

"Well." Aradia snaps her lunchbox shut. “Let’s hope you never end up there, then.” 

Either a week or a million years later, your cell phone rings while you sit at the dining room table doing your Science homework. Nobody really calls it except for maybe two people. Sure enough, one look at the caller ID, and you break into a relieved smile.

“Oh man, oh man, I missed you!” you practically shout into the receiver.

“I know,” comes a timid, almost dead-sounding voice from the other end. And then, a little more loudly, “I missed you too.”


End file.
